


Aftermath

by dolos_0



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Abusive Parents, Anxiety Attacks, Arson, Fluff, Found Family, Ghostly Shenanigans, Gore, Graphic Description of Corpses, Trans Male Character, Violence, Wilbur Soot and Technoblade and TommyInnit and Phil Watson are Siblings, blatant self insert, cameos from the discord peeps!, doppleganger, dream is a cocky little shit, georgenotfound is not found, is that a tag?, no beta we die like everyone, nonbinary characters - Freeform, they/them pronouns used for eret, tommy and tubbo being clingy, tw: wallbur
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:54:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29200164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dolos_0/pseuds/dolos_0
Summary: This is a sequel to 'I Shut My Eyes And All The World Drops Dead' by the wonderful Diamantspitzhacke (RedSoleWrites) aka Nova!I hope I do it justice
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Diamantspitzhacke (RedSoleWrites)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedSoleWrites/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> life after death. they mourn.  
> sometimes you need to reinvent yourself.

So cold. It was so cold. His hands, shaking, were slowly turning blue and he couldn’t feel his feet. Trails of blood painted his wrists crimson, hastily-slashed remnants of rope falling to the floor as he scratched at the bricks. The mortar formed jagged spikes that cut into his arms, but he was only focused on one thing, the promise of escape.

Bad opened his eyes slowly, darkness surrounding him. With a sharp gasp he sat up, a sudden stabbing pain in his torso causing him to wince. As his vision adjusted and his surroundings became clearer he wondered how he came to be lying on a bed. He searched his memories. He remembered vaguely coming into the room, turning to see a figure...but nothing after that. A feeling of dread crept over him. Something was dripping, the constant sound reaching his ears and filling him with fear. Carefully, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and attempted to stand up. Attempted, because as soon as he put any weight on his...strangely translucent feet, the pain came back tenfold and he fell to the ground, clutching his stomach. His fingers came away bloody. From the pale light of the window, he saw that the viscous fluid was all over him. His hazy memories were sharpening now, and as the tall figure grew a familiar smile, a tear slipped down his face. He remembered now; the surprise, the pain...and the cold. 

Wilbur’s hands were faintly blackened, and his stomach was growling. Shoulders aching from throwing himself against the brick countless times, legs cramping from holding him up for so long. He had lost count of the minutes he had spent, scratching at now-dry mortar, but he estimated it to be at least a day. At least a day spent, hungry and desperate, in a two by three foot hole in a wall. He was considering just slashing his wrists there and then. Suicidal contemplations were interrupted by a truly devastating sound; the tinkle of glass slipping out of his numb hands and hitting the floor. 

Karl awoke slowly. His eyes fluttered open, hands shooting to where his neck was twisted at a grotesque angle. Wilbur- what had he done? It was him who killed Bad, and- oh God, his friends! He sat upright, lifting himself away from the porcelain tiles. His sweater wasn’t doing much to keep out the bone chilling cold, and he wondered if this was a side effect of being dead. Because he obviously was dead, wasn’t he? It seemed ridiculous, him being so calm, but he was sure the shock would kick in soon. Wheezing gently, he attempted to twist his head the right way round. Excruciating pain, sickening pops...but he could talk, albeit in a whisper.  
“Hello?” He said softly, hoping it wasn’t too late to warn someone.  
“Karl?” Came a soft voice from behind him.

The dust that amalgamated on his face would have thick tear tracks cutting through it if he had water to spare. Wilbur had spent a good three hours sobbing last night, if time had any meaning here. His only confirmation that the sun still rose and fell was the square of sunlight that hit his face for exactly six minutes every day. He drank it in like it could keep him alive, but he knew it couldn’t. The only thing keeping him alive was the small puddle of wine that he took a sip from every ‘morning’, and even that was growing steadily smaller. Sometimes he swore he could hear Phil’s voice.

His brothers were gone and he could see through his body. Somehow, this wasn’t the weirdest thing that was going on, as Phil could very clearly see hands that looked like Wilbur’s sticking out of a hole in a bricked up fireplace. At first, when he woke up to terrible silence and blurry vision, he wondered why he was the only one in the room. Now, as he listened to Wilbur’s raving, a sickening picture grew in his mind. He spent most of his days pacing, listening to Wilbur talk and attempting to comfort his younger brother. Eventually, he stopped pacing. He wished he could hold his brother’s hand, but he could only watch and hope, terribly, that Wilbur would die faster.

His breath was coming shorter now. It had been approximately two weeks since he had been trapped in the fireplace and two days since the wine had run out. As the days grew shorter, the patch of sunlight grew less. Eventually, he just watched as a faint glimmer brushed over his dull skin. The beginning of the end could not have come sooner.

Skeppy did not want to die. He felt like dying, sure, when Bad had been found, but he came to terms with the knowledge that he didn’t want to go with him. So when he came to, scratching and clawing at his throat, it took him very little time before he broke down in tears. The lump in his throat wasn’t going away. He couldn’t breathe, and it took a good hour before he stopped silently screaming and realised that he didn’t need to breathe. He remembered Wilbur standing over him, stuffing something down his throat, and he remembered the blackness. He wondered if Bad was stuck like him, trapped in the house where they had spent their last moments.

His breath no longer fogged in the air. The pounding in his head was deafening. Not long now. He smiled.

Eret lay, curled in the snow like a small child, shivering. Their head hurt. Frostbite had ravaged their fingers and toes until they were stiff and blackened. They recalled the odd relief they had felt, mixed with anger and fear, when Wilbur had caved in their skull with a pickaxe. Death had honestly been a mercy. Now they could be at peace, just watching the dark line of the trees. If only it wasn’t so goddamn cold. They wondered briefly if Wilbur had killed all the others; if so, good. Those bastards deserved it.

In his final moments, Wilbur Soot screamed. He gathered his last breath of air and pushed it all out, letting loose a wail that ravaged his throat and made tears run down his face. Huh, he thought bitterly, closing his eyes. Could have used those earlier. 

Niki died afraid. Niki died betrayed. Andromeda, chained to her rock, could not have been more miserable. Oh well, Niki thought bitterly, at least Andromeda got her prince. All I got were bloodstains. Karl, who sat by the entrance to the kitchen, was staring at her again.  
“What?” she snapped, glaring. “Have I got something on my face?” ever since Wilbur, that backstabbing (or throat-cutting) son of a whore had killed her, the sweet German girl had gone from wholesome and optimistic to angry and confrontational. Getting murdered tends to do that to someone.

When Wilbur Soot came back as a ghost, his first thought was ‘not this again’. His body was sitting below him, pale and concave, one hand still stuck through the hole in the wall. He touched it with the tip of his finger, ghost and corpse meeting for the final time. Goosebumps rushed over both his skins. It was still so cold.

Sapnap, in his final moments, felt only confusion. Wilbur the first, who had shot him in the chest and left him to bleed out in the snow, and Wilbur the second who had stood by him as he died and had tears in his eyes, were jumbled together like socks in a washing machine. Red soaked into white until the whole batch was pink, pink as muscle and sinew and blood in the snow. Sometimes, he saw Eret, wandering around the pale landscape. They were always too far away to hear, but he used to raise his hand in a wave. It reminded him of his final moments, so he stopped. Now he just watches.

Phil and Wilbur. Two out of four brothers. What a shitty family reunion. They sat, staring at each other day in and day out. Sometimes they talked. Other times they just grasped each other's hands and refused to let go. Phil wondered aloud once where Tommy and Techno were, and the look Wilbur gave him scared him.

Tubbo was terrified when Tommy didn’t appear immediately. He sat, hands clenched so tightly together that they almost melted into each other. Finally, his best friend faded into view, like dust motes dancing on a sunny day. His knuckles were bloodied and his chest was caved in, but to Tubbo, who had spent five minutes anticipating eternal loneliness, he had never looked better.  
“Wilbur, that fucker, he…” Tommy trailed off as Tubbo leaps across the room and squeezes him, so tight he thinks he hears ribs break again.  
“I am never letting you go, ever again,” Tubbo whispers. Tommy, still reeling from his fight with Wilbur allows this. He isn’t crying. He is also a liar.

Several miles away, a young person is packing a bag. Slowly and methodically, they take clothes out of drawers. Pictures are left in frames; reminders of the body they don’t want will not be coming with them, on this journey to somewhere where their parents aren’t. Downstairs, a mother is crying and a father is staring blankly at a wall.

George spends two days searching for his left kidney. He looks like Frankenstein’s monster, like the beast he and Dream had read about in year eight. He remembered sitting at the back of the class, next to the new american student, and the smiles that Dream had shot his way when the teacher asked if any of them had read Frankenstein before. He remembers laughing about that book with Dream and Sapnap. Now that he’s just like the monster, it’s a little less funny. He spends hours walking through the corridors, visiting the places where his body parts still lie. He carries messages between the other souls in the house, but not once does he see Dream or Sapnap. He is a little sad about this. He also never sees Wilbur, and this is the thing that keeps him going.

It’s raining as the person climbs out of their bedroom window. They are so young to have such dark circles under their eyes. They are too young to know that the footsteps walking up the stairs are not their mother’s or father’s, but their pastor’s. They jump out of the window and jog into the woods, feeling the weight of expectation slip off of their shoulders.

Fundy never knew that the man who wore his friend’s face killed him. As the knife entered his back, he felt shock, but it was shock at his abrupt murder and not shock of someone who he trusted murdering him violently. He falls off the roof fifty metres from where Sapnap spent his final moments, and when Sapnap tries to shout news of Wilbur’s betrayal towards him, it is whipped away by the howling wind. No doubt that this preserved Fundy some feeling of goodwill towards the man he spent his last day on Earth with.

The youth is tiring now, as police sirens wail in the background. They slip and fall and the blood that weeps from the wound on their hand is red. They don’t know why they expected it not to be. They cross the river, leaving a trail behind them, and when the police dogs find it, the youth is assumed dead. There is a funeral held for the wrong person; friends mourn them correctly, silently.

It was almost poetic, thought Techno. Doppelgangers. It was the only logical explanation, right? He clearly heard Wilbur, his Wilbur, through the walkie talkie as he died. Demons could take the form of your loved one, but Techno doesn’t believe in demons. Or, perhaps (and this is something he refuses to believe), his brother had murdered everyone, including their family and friends. It’s easier to pretend to be insane, and so he leans against the cellar wall, across from his own corpse, and tries to remember everything he’s read about doppelgangers.

The youth regrets their decision, only a little, but it’s enough. They’re halfway up the mountain now. They are unsure what they’re looking for. When they come down (if they come down), where will they go? They have cousins in Europe. Perhaps they will run away and start a commune.

Dream picks his head up from where it has rolled under a chair and dusts off his own cheek. For Hallowe’en when he, George and Sapnap were fifteen he dressed up as a headless horseman. He held a pumpkin under his arm and gave all his candy to Drista, because she whined. He wonders absently if Drista will miss him. If anyone will miss him. He’s pretty popular, but will anyone even notice that he’s gone? They had walked for hours before finding the mansion, that’s for sure. Just another face on a missing poster. He tucks his head under his arm (it fits like he was born to die) and looks down at his body. He thinks he hears a scream, from somewhere in the house. He thinks it sounds like Wilbur. He thinks...if I came back, did anyone else?

In the silent house, bodies rot. The previous occupants of said bodies don’t rot, but some of them wish they could. It is so cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god this was a ride! i speedwrote this in about two hours and i hope it lives up to its absolutely jaw-dropping prequel!
> 
> also, the youth is named achilles, and is nonbinary. see if you can spot a little inside joke with their name.


End file.
